Yes I'm very sure you can create disk image using Storagecraft ShadowProtect server, trial ver is fine
Convert the resulting .spf image file to VM using vmware converter will do the trick
Try it!

hi,

As far as i know Support for Windows 2008 R2 is not available. please refer to the relase notes.

http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv401.html

one alternate way you can do is based on the release notes use one of the following products to create a image of your machine and use converter to make a VM out of the same

Acronis True Image Echo 9.1, 9.5, and Acronis True Image 10, 11 (Home product) 1, 2
Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly LiveState Recovery) 6.5, 7.0, 8.0 and 8.5, LiveState Recovery 3.0 and 6.0 2
Norton Ghost version 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, and 14.0 (.sv2i files) 2
Parallels Desktop for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS x 2.5, 3.0, and 4.0 3
StorageCraft ShadowProtect 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 2, 4


regards
bhanu

Just for info, what Service is the physical machine hosting ? (DNS, DHCP, Domain Controller)

It looks liek the long and the short of it is that VMware converter does not support Windows server 2008 R2 yet (Thanks bhanukir7). You have to use some 3rd party imaging tool (Thanks ryder0707, ShadowProtect worked very well) to do the disk image for you and then use VMWare Converter to import the Image as a VM.

The only problem with this is that once you import the VM it doesnt start. It failes on device drivers (Classpnp.sys in my particular case) which I have tried for hours now to sort out and there just doesnt seem like any easy way to fix it (Tried StartRep.exe and sfc /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=C:\ /OFFWINDIR-C:\Windows).

I'm going to try some of the other imaging tools to see if they handle the "dissimilar hardware" issue (Physical to Virtual) better.

For now, thank you everyone for your help. I'll post back if I find an "Easy" Solution.
arunraju: Its a physical server running SQL2008R2

You can also try Acronis Products.

Acronis TIB Images are a supported conversion source for VMware vConverter.

bhanukir7,

thank you very much for this reply.

it worked perfectly fine for me.

hi pannivas,

glad that it worked good for you. waiting for the actual asker of this question to update me if he has tried the same and if he was able to achieve success.

regards
bhanu

yea i think it will only be fair to give you the points.

i have only made the last step with starwind software as i already had my Win2008 R2 machines running under Hyper-V however the first steps to convert physical machines to Hyper-V VHD files is fairly easy and should give any problems at all.

Sorry all. My requirement was based on a critical business need to make the physical server available for other needs. I had a very short space in time in witch to either P2V or do a manual Migrate of SQL DB's. Unfortunately Time won the race and we ended up going with the manual Migration.

Agreed that bhanukir7 solution worked for pannivas so he/she is righfully due the points.

Waitning for VMWare to release a converter for 2008 R2 that doesnt require maual work.

hi Investec,

I did think of migrating the SQL DB but that would not be the right answer for what you have asked for so did not post that.

Yes i am also looking for this functionality as at this point we in our setup majority of the times do only V2V or clone from a template for windows 2008 R2 and even for cloning if you have your OS type set to windows 2008  or windows 2008 R2 the cloning fails if you selected customization. The workaround for this in VMware is to set the OS type to Vista (32bit) or (64bit). So atleast i hope VMware comes up with a V2V/Cloning option option for windows 2008

Regards
bhanu

Hi,
I have created teh VHD Than i coverted to VMDK, but the problem is when the OS boots on VMware VM than it gives an error on blue screen with  page_fault_in_nonpage_area. I ma able to boot in safe mode without any issue..

Any one can help on this.

The OS is MS server 2008 32 bit Data center